So I've been absent for a bit. I was in Anchorage visiting family and enjoying their current heatwave (not kidding) featuring the longest stretch of days with high temperatures in the 70s on record. Okay, so I missed that stretch by a couple of days, but while I was there the high one day was 72F (22C for my non-existent, non-American readership), and I don't know how people managed to survive it. Down here in Arkansas we have days like that in December sometimes, but I'm not going to pick nits here. It was madness, people! But then one day was overcast, and the high was 54F (12C). That's how sanity made a comeback in Alaska.
Anywho, I found this gem on Facebook earlier today. Enjoy.
Dear Mr. President:
During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive Shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive
Brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone.
While glancing over her Patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as "Medic...aid"! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer.
And, you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman's health care?
I contend that our nation's "health care crisis" is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. Rather, it is the result of a "crisis of culture", a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance.
It is a culture based on the irresponsible credo that "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me". Once you fix this "culture crisis" that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you'll be amazed at how quickly our nation's health care difficulties will disappear.
Respectfully,
STARNER JONES, MD
A picture of our good doctor.
Let's see if we can break down the subtext here a bit. First, take a look at the wee-bit-too-vague-to-be-effectively-vague description.
1) Tattoos? Could be just about anyone under 40 these days.
2) Expensive mobile phone? Ditto. R&B ringtone? Hmmm. Well...
3) Expensive athletic shoes? Okay, now we're veering toward a more "urban" (to use the generally accepted kinda-sorta-race-neutral euphemism for "African-American" which is obvs totally accurate because EVERYONE knows all black people are denizens of the inner city) stereotype. It's not impossible that the good doctor could be describing a white woman, but youngish white women who sport multiple tattoos and go in for pricey mobile phones tend to wear throwback Converse or something more socially conscious these days. (Toms, anyone?) Expensive athletic shoes not so much. Do me a favor. Next time you walk into a Whole Foods look at what the employees sporting multiple tats and piercings have on their feet. If you see one with the latest pair of $200 athletic shoes endorsed by an NBA star please share a pic with me. Otherwise, I'm not inclined to believe it. Also, please do the same for any unicorns or Sasquatch you happen to encounter.
4) Gold tooth? At this point, Doc might as well start butchering vocabulary from Urban Dictionary in an attempt to relate with "the kids" who might be reading. "But John," you might ask, "aren't you engaging in a racial stereotype by saying that 'gold tooth' is code for 'shiftless black'"? Yes, I am, and the reason I am is to expose the fact that this guy is doing it. Be honest, if not with me then at least with yourself. When you read "gold tooth" did you think of a white person? Of course not. You weren't meant to. This whole parade of stereotypes is meant to evoke a singular image. Not because stereotypes are accurate, necessarily, but because they're useful shorthand for things we're not supposed to say.
5) Finally, to get to his point, he makes sure to say this person was on Medicaid. So what we're looking at here is really a not-so-cleverly reimagined cover tune, so to speak. It's a replay of the Golden Oldie, "Welfare Queen". Granted, not as ear-wormy as "Caribbean Queen" (you're welcome, btw), but Billy Ocean's classic '80s adult contemporary hit doesn't have the staying power of that perniciously persistent (hooray for alliteration!) tune, either.
I'll just bottom line it since we're running a bit long at this point. Do people like this exist? Probably. Most stereotypes have at least a modicum of truth which is why they seem plausible in the first place, but to suggest that the representation on offer here is applicable even to the greatest majority of people on Medicaid is specious, at best. In fact, like Welfare and Food Stamps, a substantial majority of people on Medicaid are white, poor, and they work. So what this "letter" to the president (and we all know which president despite the lack of a name) really amounts to is one more attempt to slander the poor by a privileged white dude who doesn't like that his money goes toward helping people he doesn't identify with personally. The medical doctor part of it, I would suggest, is meant to lend the whole thing a bit more respectability, but allow me to assure you that there are just as many medical doctors out there who are insufferable, selfish pricks interested in little more than the money as there are good, decent, selfless practitioners of the healing arts. Well, maybe not as many, but certainly enough to cast unwarranted doubt on others who became doctors for much better reasons.
There is absolutely no way this doctor can know who pays for this woman's phone. Or when she got those tattoos. Or how she came by those expensive shoes. Or really anything else of substance about her since he seems never to have bothered to get past his own smirking assumptions. He cannot possibly know what circumstances lead to her being on Medicaid. All he knows is that he doesn't approve of this woman's choices (which he also has no means of understanding without, you know, talking to her), and he resents having to pay for "these people's" Medicaid. Well, you know what, Doc? I didn't approve of the invasion of Iraq back in 2003. Some of my taxes still go toward paying for it, and will keep going toward paying for it for quite a while. In a society as diverse as ours, you are virtually guaranteed to disagree with some part of what your taxes pay for, but that's part of the deal. You don't have to stand by and say nothing about what you dislike about the system, but when part of your complaint includes dehumanizing people who don't share your standing within that system by using broad, unsupported, and inaccurate stereotypes you've pretty much just opted for going full douchebag. This guy also decided to spring for the full racist douchebag package. Why not? It only costs a little more, and he's a doctor so he can probably afford it.
